Vampire®: The Masquerade - Bloodlines™

When it comes to compuer role playing games this is one of these games that you must have played if you're into the genre. It does pretty much everything right, eith a few issues that can easilly be avoided. The game is extremly buggy at times but most of the times you can just noclip your way out of bugs, I didn't bother to look up mods or unofficial patches since the GOG version just worked perfectly for me. For combat you will have to stick to melee, I maxed my ranged weapons skill and still it just seems unplayable, U constantly ran out of ammo, weapons are inaccurate at time, the ai is just not made for shooting and you just get to do much more damage by goin melee but it still somehow manages to create some kind of challenge... it did for me atleast I thought it was all good enough and kept me hooked unlike many other games.

I remember playing Bloodlines against my parents' wishes back in 2005 or so. Anything to do with magic, demons, vampire, or the otherwise supernatural was strictly forbidden, but I was just getting into my teenage years. After watching the Blade trilogy, I was unsurprisingly obsessed with vampires. Anyway, Bloodlines was exactly what I wanted; at the time, I called it "Morrowind with actual vampires." Fast forward to now, where I rediscovered this classic and am having so much fun. It's been so long that it feels like a new game to me, especially with some mods thrown in to improve things a bit. Considering the recent announcement of the sequel, now's a great time to come back to this and play it. Sure, it hasn't aged well graphically and the some of the voice work is downright terrible, but it woos with its charm, its mystique, and its otherwise awesome writing and atmosphere.

I played this when it first came out, and recently replayed it with the Unofficial Patch & Plus Patch. Loved the immersive story. The game does such a great job of invoking atmosphere with rich character expressions, mysterious conspiracies, and music. As you progress through the game, the TV, news, and radio reflect the events (well, some of them). The patches also made it look surprisingly good on my 2560x1440 display. To be sure there are flaws: some of the humour/writing hasn't aged well; combat is a bit clumsy; it can get tiresome running back and forth across towns on fetch quests, and a walkthrough will help you with a few of the puzzles. But I can look beyond those to be immersed in a world of darkness.

This game is absolutely fantastic. A showcase of the design that could've been is that in one of the first few quests, you are tasked to steal a donation box, where you can protest to not do so, and told that it was going to the rich anyways. Stealing it without protesting leads to a loss in humanity (sort of like a score of morality). But if you do protest and get told the truth about the box, you do not lose humanity. Unfortunately, the later parts of the game are not nearly as well designed and it becomes a dungeon crawler. However all the quests, characters and the early levels are all fantastic and i can't say there's a single character or line of dialog that is poorly written. Here's a little story: I bought this game in my "welcome to GOG" deal, and this game was one of the many on the pile of games i bought. I ignored it for months but eventually i ran out of games on steam to play and decided to check GOG. I sorted them by player reviews and this was the top choice (after Deus Ex which my pc was incompatible with at the time because that pc was garbage.) The first time i played it i skipped the tutorial completely and went around on the street and accidentally right clicked, which alerted police and I died pretty quick. I decided after that to actually role play and design my character based on how i wanted my character to be. I made him a persuasive artist that uses vampiric powers to slow down (their perception of) time and shoot people. Little did i know this is the most overpowered build in the entire game.

VtM:B is barely finished. The graphics are uneven, the mechanics are unrefined, and it's full of bugs even when patched. It's also one of the best RPGs you'll ever play. The game is great at making you go through everything you would expect from a blood-sucker trying to hide from the human world: you will drain people's blood, get involved in vampire politics, fight thugs, cops and monsters alike, and explore haunted houses! A great emphasis is put on atmosphere, with most places exhaling a new flavor of spookiness or gloom. Besides the awesome game world, based off a famous pen and paper RPG, what truly shines here is the overall writing. Every single character you meet feels like a living person, and interacting with them feels great, courtesy of awesome dialog: the voice acting is fabulous and facial animations are rock-solid! The main plot and sidequests are equally complex and full of twists and subtleties. The game is full of alternate paths, often letting you choose how to approach the situations you're confronted to. Violence is almost always an option, but negotiating or sneaking up can just as well get the job done. The skills you can choose tend however to vary widely in usefulness, with some totally outclassing others or proving almost indispensable - like hacking. The combat is janky as hell, but satisfying, whether you use melee weapons or firearms - guns suck at first, but make the last levels easier! Some magic powers totally rule, allowing you to transform, summon animals, and use bullet-time! The main flaw, for me, is that the game starts losing steam in its last fourth: from your arrival in Chinatown, there's less annex content, environments get blander, and a greater emphasis is put on combat instead of alternate solutions. It is still fun, but it's clear that the developers were running out of time and resources at this point. Still, despite its lack of polish, VtM:B is an awesome experience where each playthrough is different from the last!